IDF destroys Hamas terror compound overlooking Israel; rocket hits aid crossing

The Israeli military said Saturday that its troops had in recent days demolished an entire residential complex in northern Gaza, close to Beit Hanoun, which had been used as a hideout and command center by senior Hamas commanders.

The military said the “officers’ neighborhood” had high-rise buildings overlooking the Sderot area of southern Israel and served as a “central terror complex” with anti-tank firing positions, booby traps, tunnels and rocket launchers aimed at Israel.

The complex overlooks the Israeli community of Netiv Ha’asara and was considered a threat to the rail line to Sderot, which hasn’t operated since Oct. 7, 2023.

The IDF said combat engineers destroyed the entire complex and the terror infrastructure it housed over the past week.

On Saturday evening a rocket launched from the northern Gaza Strip struck the Erez Border Crossing, the military said. There were no immediate reports of injuries and it was unclear if major damage was caused. It marked the ninth day in a row of rocket fire from Gaza. Sirens had sounded in nearby Netiv Ha’asara during the attack.

The crossing, which in the past facilitated people’s movement between Gaza and Israel, is being used to bring aid into Gaza.

At the same time, Palestinian medics said over 60 people had been killed in strikes across Gaza over the last day, including 12 in a house in Gaza City early on Saturday. Medics said several children were among those killed.

A recent surge in Israeli operations comes amid a renewed push to reach a ceasefire in the 15-month-old war and bring home Israeli hostages before US President-elect Donald Trump takes office on January 20.

Israeli mediators were dispatched to resume talks in Doha, which were broken down by Qatari and Egyptian mediators.

On Friday, US President Joe Biden’s administration, which is helping to broker the talks, urged Hamas to agree to a deal. Hamas said it was committed to reaching an agreement, but it was unclear how close the two sides were.

Also on Friday, Israeli officials at the UN defended its raid on a north Gaza hospital last week.

Meanwhile, the UN human rights chief called the justification unsubstantiated and the World Health Organization urged Israel to release the hospital’s director from detention.

Israel’s UN Ambassador in Geneva Daniel Meron posted on social media a letter he sent Friday to the WHO and Volker Turk, the UN human rights official. It said the raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital a week ago was “triggered by irrefutable evidence” that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists were using the hospital.

He said Israeli forces had taken “extraordinary measures to protect civilian life while acting on credible intelligence.”

Turk told the UN Security Council on Friday that Israel did not “substantiate many of these claims, which are often vague and broad. In some cases, they appear to be contradicted by publicly available information.”

“I am calling for independent, thorough and transparent investigations into all Israeli attacks on hospitals, healthcare infrastructure and medical personnel, as well as the alleged misuse of such facilities,” he told the 15-member body.

Hamas has fought from within hospitals throughout the war and periodically hid some of the hostages kidnapped from Israel on October 7, 2023, inside them. International law generally prohibits targeting hospitals during wartime, but hospitals can lose this protection if they are used for military purposes.

Israel has repeatedly raided hospitals it says were used as hideouts and command centers by terror groups throughout the war, making dozens and sometimes hundreds of arrests of terror suspects during such operations.

Israel’s Deputy UN Ambassador Jonathan Miller said more than “240 terrorists were apprehended” during the latest raid, “including 15 who participated in the Oct. 7 massacre” in southern Israel in 2023, which triggered the war in the Gaza Strip. The hospital’s director, Hussam Abu Safiya, was also detained in the raid.

“We suspect him of being a Hamas operative, as hundreds of Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists were hiding inside the Kamal Adwan Hospital under his management. He is currently being investigated by Israeli security forces,” Miller said.

The WHO is deeply concerned about Abu Safiya, said WHO representative Richard Peeperkorn, adding: “We have lost contact with him since and call for his immediate release.”

The United States is gathering information about Abu Safiya, Deputy US Ambassador to the UN Dorothy Shea told the Security Council.

Palestinian UN envoy Riyad Mansour broke down in tears as he recalled words that a doctor from Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), Mahmoud Abu Nujaila, wrote at Gaza’s Al Awda Hospital before he was killed in a strike in November 2023.

Mansour said that Nujaila had written on a hospital whiteboard used for planning surgeries: “Whoever stays until the end, will tell the story. We did what we could. Remember us.”

Rocket sirens sounded several times Friday in Israeli communities along the Gaza border, in the eighth straight day of incoming fire from the enclave, as the IDF said it launched airstrikes against some 40 staging grounds of terror operatives and Hamas command centers across the territory.

A siren in Be’eri midday Friday was triggered by a surface-to-air missile launched at an Israeli Air Force helicopter flying over Gaza, according to military sources. The shoulder-launched missile, fired by a gunman in the Bureij area of central Gaza, did not come close to hitting the helicopter, and was successfully shot down by the Iron Dome air defense system, the sources said.

Rocket fire from Gaza has generally become rare since the early months of the ongoing multifront war.

Following the sirens in Be’eri, the IDF issued an evacuation warning for Palestinian civilians in the Bureij area of central Gaza. “Terror organizations are once again firing rockets from this area that has received warnings several times in the past,” Col. Avichay Adraee, the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesman said on X, attaching a map of the areas to be evacuated.

Civilians were urged to head for the Israeli-designated humanitarian zone in southern Gaza before the IDF launched strikes on the area.

The IDF also said Friday it had launched airstrikes against some 40 targets across the Gaza Strip over the past day, including staging grounds for terror operatives as well as Hamas command centers. The strikes were launched by the IAF in a joint operation with the IDF’s Southern Command, using intelligence provided by the Military Intelligence Directorate and Shin Bet security agency.

The IDF said dozens of Hamas operatives were gathered at the targeted sites, from which they planned and launched attacks against troops in Gaza and against Israel.

Some sites were embedded in former schools, which have also served as shelters for displaced Palestinians.

The IDF said this was “another example of Hamas’s cynical and systematic use of civilians and civilian infrastructure in the Gaza Strip for terror purposes.” The military said it took steps to mitigate civilian harm in the strikes, including by using “precision munitions, aerial surveillance and other intelligence.”

Also on Friday, the IDF released drone footage from one former school in northern Gaza’s Jabalia where Hamas operatives had been holed up. The video showed several assault rifles inside the damaged school building.

According to the IDF, the school was searched by troops of the Givati Brigade, who found numerous weapons. In a nearby residential building, the military said, the troops found RPGs in a child’s bedroom.

Meanwhile, COGAT, the Defense Ministry body responsible for overseeing the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza, said that 1,200 units of blood and 3,000 units of plasma were delivered Thursday to Nasser Hospital, in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis via the Kerem Shalom Crossing.

COGAT said the blood and plasma were delivered “to support ongoing treatments and maintain essential operations at the hospital.” The operation was carried out in coordination with international organizations, COGAT said, adding the transfer underwent “stringent security inspections.”

According to Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry, more than 45,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 18,000 combatants in battle as of November and another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.

Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools and mosques.

Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip stands at 395. The toll includes a police officer killed in a hostage rescue mission and a Defense Ministry civilian contractor.